


letting people down is my thing

by molotovhappyhour



Series: The Force Shall Free Me [7]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, M/M, delicate emotional states, gratuitous universe references, master/padawan relationship implied, not jedi-friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like a riddle. "A pickpocket, a Jedi, and two words."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

( _two jedi and two words—_

 _no. stop. redo._ )

“State your name and planet of origin for the record.” The flat tone of the droid bounces around the Senate chamber, a cold metallic presence where life buzzes around it in stark contrast. The honeycombed seating—layer upon layer of rounded platforms—surround the small, stationary platform on which Eren stands (and on which stand two armed and very annoyed guards—their emotions taste like a fermented bean paste, heavy on the tongue, something that can’t quite be ignored).

“Can’t I just confess?” He’s not used to this. The echoing of his own voice in a chamber that’s supposed to be buzzing with something else—with debate and corruption and the soul of the galaxy. “And then you can kill me or whatever the fuck you have planned, I don’t—“

The Chief of State (Supreme Chancellor? He can never quite keep this shit straight these days, all the people in charge being made of nothing but lies and ever-changing titles) is a Mon Calamari, her red-pink skin glowing under the artificial light as she steps forward, bulbous eyes wide and dark as she considers him from her seat near the top of the honeycomb—because Eren is standing where she belongs.

( _This_ , he thinks, but doesn’t say,  _is what aquarium fish look like when they’re on their deathbed_.)

“If we’re going to try you, Jedi,” the sandpaper of her voice scrapes along the edges of the chamber, shockingly quiet in a way that he had never thought it was—not with the way Jean talked about it, with the way he’d seen it in the two times he’d ever been inside, “we need to make sure we’ve given you _all available_  due process, lest you be acquitted on something as basic as a  _fair trial_.”

Disdain smacks him across the face, reeking of something sour and stale. Somewhere to his left he can feel the Caamasi Senator narrowing zir eyes, shuddering from the tips of golden-furred ears to the soles of zir boots.

(He doesn’t catalogue the bitterness to his right, across the chamber and up in guest seating, behind plasteel windows.

It burns white and bright because Levi always does, layered over with the clouded secrecy of Jean, and the poised weapon that has to be Mikasa, sharp and ready for action even in something so  _uneventful_  as criminal proceedings.

Then again, it’s rare that criminal proceedings ever come before the Senate.)

“State your name and planet of origin for the record,” the droid intones a second time.

He curls his fingers into fists, the cuffs biting at the skin of his wrists. He has nowhere to hide his hands, the tell-all that his robes used to hide, tension straining down his arms and into his chest and curling his toes. “Eren Jaeger. This is  _so_   _stupid_ —“

“Planet of origin.”

“Why does this  _matter_ —“

“Planet of origin.”

“ _Coruscant_.”

“Proceedings may continue, Chancellor.”

If Eren doesn’t die today, or tomorrow, or within the next standard week, he’s going to fuck that droid  _up_. Cut it to pieces, crush it beneath the heel of his boots,  _rip the wiring from the center of its metallic chest_ —

A deep breath that tastes like ozone and Eren sneers. "Sure you don't want my  _age_? My  _blood-type_?"

Something so hot as to be cold soothes down his spine. A familiar sort of burning chill that wrings streams of light from his pores, opens up the universe into something bright and white and terrifying—so that to look directly into it, he’d need to squint, so that to let it in fully would split him apart and bring something else entirely out from beneath the cage of his ribs.

He knows because that’s what this light has done before, what this chill has done before.

What Levi has done before.

( _a pickpocket, a bounty hunter, and two words—_

 _no, wait._ )

He shakes the sensation from his shoulders, the gray prison fabric rubbing over his skin like small teeth.

( _a sith, a jedi, and two words—_

 _wrong. try again._ )

“Grandmaster Smith testified earlier,” the Chancellor says, her voice rasping against the bowl-edges of the atrium, curling the chrome finish on the walls, “that you informed the Jedi that you were going on a mission to the Hapes Cluster. Is this testimony accurate?” Even if it wasn’t—which it is—he wonders if his own testimony would be believable anyway, past the walls of suspicion, supported with pillars of buzzing rage.

“Yeah. I told Jean—who is, in fact, a  _singular Jedi_  rather than all the Jedi we have, so I told  _a Jedi_ —that I was going to Hapes.”

( _a pickpocket, a jedi, and two words:_ )

“And did you go to Hapes?”

His weight shifts between his feet, pressing his fingers into his palms as he meets the dark event horizons of her too-big eyes. “No. I went to Omwat instead.” The planet had felt like standing atop a mountain, chilled but  _refreshing_ , so pulsing with a simple sort of life that for a moment Eren had forgotten why he’d been there in the first place.

( _“come back.”_ )

But then fingers had clasped hard at his throat and ozone tickled his teeth.

(The rest, as they say, is  _history_.)

The Senate murmurs, a wave of gentle sound from one Senator to another and the disgust undulates over his shoulders, even as the known chill attempts to soothe the burning in his mouth. “Why was Omwat your destination?” This question is murmured in abstract into the space of the Senate Chamber from the Sullustan representative, head swinging slowly from side to side.

On any other species, such a gesture would be predatory. But Sullustans don’t have that capacity, their faces too gentle and round for that, and Eren shuts his eyes against the confused despair humming in his sinuses. “I knew the Jedi had sent some personnel there. I was going to crash the party.” He cocks his head, tracing the slope of the Mon Calamari’s forehead in his mind’s eye. “Funny how I found Republic military there too. The galaxy is full of  _punchlines_.”

(And it is only from those punchlines that one finds out what the joke was. They’re hardly ever funny.)

When he opens his eyes, the protective membrane comes down over the Chancellor’s, wide pupils making dark eyes darker.

It is the Senator from Corellia who breaks the silence that seems to be following him around these days (even as storm clouds build on every horizon he can see, darkness rumbling threats of corruption and promises of vindication) when he says, “elaborate.”

He speaks a little like Erwin, and as far as Eren remembers, this Senator is a friend of his (Mike, if he’s remembering correctly, but he doesn’t turn to check).

“The Jedi lied to me. Jedi saved my life and they lied to me.” A hiss, and he meets the Chancellor’s eyes full on. “I hate them for it.”

A pin could drop, in this beehive of stillness, and everyone from the tallest spacescraper to the slums of the sublevels could have heard it. He takes a breath and looks away, reconsidering his plan of action. “Or—they didn’t lie. Not just to me.” His fingers unfurl from against the meat of his hand, the knuckles cracking. “Jedi like to talk a lot of shit about how great they are—and how they’re servants who keep the peace.” Another pause and if he tries he can see into the past and breathe in the Coruscanti underworld—mildew and hidden corpses, algae that purify the air that airscrubbers can barely get to. Alcohol. Smoke. Laughter with sharp edges, food that tastes like permacrete.

Murmur, chatter, murmur, silence. Another touch against his shoulders, another shrug and he shakes himself out of the slime and sickness of the slums.

( _a pickpocket, a jedi, and two words_ )

“But Jedi think they know better because they have the insight of the Force. And because they know better, they think they don’t need to  _explain_  themselves.” His mouth is twisting and his shoulders are curling against the familiar brush of comfort against his spine that just  _won’t_  leave him alone. “Everyone  _expects_  the Senate to be festering with lies and bantha-shit—but the Jedi are supposed to be above that. They’re  _supposed_  to be—but they’re  _not_. They take—“ a pause, a breath, and tar sticks in his windpipe, strangling his voice with its toxicity. Senators reel in their seats, taken aback by his slander against the center of the Republic. “Force-sensitive children are dangerous if they’re not found by Jedi. I was—a lot of—it’s hard to teach control to— _they take children_. I didn’t know they took children. They were testing children for the Force on Omwat.”

Stiffness. The Force crystalises and—his eyes are watering, he thinks.

“Jedi Jaeger, is it true,” the Senator from Naboo smooths his robes—another one of Erwin’s friends, speaking now that the Chancellor is out of words—“that the Republic militia stationed to assist the Jedi on Omwat fired upon you first?”

“That doesn’t change anything.” He pauses to inhale and flames lick at his teeth. “And don’t call me Jedi.”

“Is it  _true_ ,” Erd repeats (and the familiar Force-touch keeps trying and he keeps shrugging it from his shoulders, trying to drop it like the weight it has become).

“They fired first,” and his voice has never sounded so loud or so distant—a dichotomy. “They fired first because I threatened the Jedi. There were two Jedi. Sixteen soldiers. I killed all of militia and held the Jedi.” Something opens wide—he feels it—and the heat pushes back to flood his fingers, curling them back against his hands, his eyes trying to push back the water, trembling on the precipice of existence. “There. I confessed. Are we all _happy_?”

A pause and another ripple makes its way from worker bee to worker bee.

The membranes peel back from the Chancellor’s eyes. “Jedi Jaeger—“

“I’m not a  _fucking Jedi_.” It feels good to say that, the words tumbling out of his mouth white hot and painful, leaving open sores behind to dig into his cheeks. This is the straw that breaks the bantha. “I’m not a  _shitting_ , fucking  _stupid_  Jedi. Jedi are  _serene and calm_  and Jedi don’t get  _attached_. There is no  _secondary goal_  in the Order. You are a Jedi first and _only_.” A step forward and two blaster rifles rattle in the grips of the two officers behind him—he can feel them pointing at his spine. “Their word is  _law_. You cannot get  _angry_ , you can’t be  _afraid_ , you can’t have anything. I’m not a _Jedi_ , stop calling me a  _Jedi_ , the Jedi have  _nothing_  to do with me. I did  _all this_  on my own.”

Every species blurs into nothing, going out of focus and turning into washes of colour as something breaks open inside his chest, his voice splintering apart.

( _two words._ )

“Stop calling me a Jedi.” He curls an extra hand around the cuffs on his wrists, through the Force, crunching down on the too-weak metal, taking into account only human strength rather than the river of power that he could drown in if he tried—if he didn’t try—is drowning in already. “And get better cuffs.”

Two points of impact align themselves upward on his spine as the soldiers behind him raise their rifles further and aim for his head, turning off the safeties. It’s with a slow blink that Eren clears his eyes, feeling tears crust on his cheeks and watches the Chancellor, holding up his hands in surrender. “We’re done here.”

(He can feel Levi reaching for him, the chill of him in the Force doing nothing except pushing Eren's head underwater.)

He keeps his strides long so the guards have to keep up when they hit the corridor out of the Senate chamber—for the safety of the  _public_ , you understand. Safety is important,  _integral_ , and it is this that keeps them from being stopped on their way back to the cell blocks and to the heavy door that keeps him from having to talk about this anymore.

( _two words_.)

He crosses his legs atop his cot, cupping his palms in his lap (as if curling his hands around a dying flame, a dying something, a thing that could wink out if he sighs too deeply or one of the many storms rolls down from the hills somewhere) and he breathes out, slow.

( _“come back.”_ )


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They reach out and find the other wanting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this series it's just a set of "how much can i make eren a fallen jedi"

When Eren walks into a room, it’s as if a desert breathes into Levi’s lungs, stealing a good chunk of his life and even more of his breath, leaving his mouth dry and empty, a punch to the chest that could kill him if he lets it.

(But Levi doesn’t _let_ many people do anything, and so when Eren stands before the Masters’ Council—looking for all the world calm and confident, though a _child_ could feel the cloud hanging on his shoulders—Levi stands without moving.)

“Marco came to get me,” Eren says when none of the Masters speak. His robes hang on him differently than they used to, as if he forgot how to wear anything other than prison-issue gray. But his hands are tucked away inside his sleeves as they always had been before, an attempt at hiding any feelings, swallowing them like glass to store them anywhere but where they could be seen. “Do I get to go on trial here too?”

(He doesn’t try to touch Eren here—not through the Force. He’ll only shrug it off and wrinkle his nose, and Levi’s a little too tired for that just now.)

Erwin speaks for all of them when they sit down, which Levi counts as a relief, even if it isn't always wise to trust the man who tends to put words into other people's mouths.

(Eren stands in place—and he’s restless.)

“Not exactly. We’ve heard your testimony already.”

“Oh,” and the smile Eren puts on his face is just as much a lie as any other posturing he tries, though considerably less fun to watch. “Do you want to know my starsign or something? The Senate left that question out of the pre-trial survey.”

Erwin blinks slowly and Levi sighs, bracing himself for the dam that's about to break inside his chest. “No. You’re here for a debriefing.”

The shock on Eren’s face is so complete, that response so unexpected, that any pretense that he’d come here with hits the floor with a hollow _thud_ , breathing a tropical sort of stillness into the Force around them, even as Eren's guesses as to what he'd been called here for collapse inward.

“Uh,” he says. Erwin shrugs. “Uh? What?”

“A debriefing. If we’re going to reinstate you into the Order—“

“I don’t want to be reinstated into the Order.” Eren’s words are clipped, but undercarried with a rage that tastes like citroot peels. “I want to go back to my room and sit there and sleep all day and not be in the Order anymore. What part of I’m _not_ a fucking Jedi is so hard to get? I shouldn’t even be out here. Everyone knows that.”

A breeze that doesn’t exist ruffles Eren’s dark robes around his boots.

(Everyone and their mother knows that Eren had isolated himself from the Order—that way no one could be blamed for his traipsing around the Outer Rim looking for children he’d felt were in danger.

But there are times when isolation has its limitations, and this is one of them.)

“My mistake,” Erwin speaks smoothly, a frozen moon-world with an unbroken surface, smoothed by time and experience. His is a stone face that could win any game of sabacc. “I must have forgotten to mention that throwing a tantrum here won’t have the same results you experienced in the Senate. There aren’t any cuffs for you to break here so that you can exile yourself in the name of _penance_.”

Eren’s eyebrows furrow and his nostrils flare—and the desert wind that should remind him of Tatooine but doesn’t hisses through the room. “Don’t treat me like a child.”

Erwin opens his hands, a gesture that would look placating on anyone else. “Then maybe you should stop acting like one.”

Eren’s face twitches as if he’d been hit with an open palm, and his arms drop to his sides. Levi feels an invisible slap across his own face. “Debriefing, you said.”

(His tone flatlines, but there is a storm building on a hillside somewhere. Levi can smell it when he breathes in.)

“The Senate will decide within the week that, since the Republic Military fired on you first, you were well within your rights to defend yourself.”

Eren blinks, his pupils contracting. “I could’ve left them alive. I could’ve deflected bolts back into their knees.”

“If you were anyone but a Jedi, you would have been acquitted already. Stop dwelling on it.” Erwin flicks his fingers as if to physically pluck that thought from Eren’s mouth, tossing it aside to one of the transparisteel floor-to-ceiling windows that give the view of Coruscant from the Temple—a breathtaking sight, certainly, but one that no one is attending to. “Upon your acquittal, you will be _officially_ reinstated into the Order.”

Eren says nothing to this.

“You’ll be earning your penance with us instead of in a jail cell somewhere.” Erwin pauses here. “You could refuse, but we’ll end up jailing you here. Knowing you, that’s the last thing you want.”

Eren’s lips twitch and he remains silent.

(It is the least Levi has heard him talk since the flight back to Coruscant from Omwat—but he doesn’t like to think about that very much.)

“To begin getting the Jedi back into the good graces of the public, you’ll be working with Coruscant Security Force—directly under Captain Dawk.”

“Nile _hates_ me!” Eren’s voice cracks when he speaks and his pupils blow wide. Panic smacks Levi in the face with knuckles sharper than shorn metal. “And the feeling’s _mutual!_ Can’t I just work somewhere—“

“No.” Erwin cuts him off. “Due to your little detour to the Outer Rim, Jedi sentiments are at an all-time low.” Another slow blink and Erwin’s tone gets predatory. “We aren’t trustworthy. Apparently not even to our own _members_. You have made Jedi violent. Your thievery of a _merchant ship_ with the aid of Jedi techniques is a glaring example of mishandled power.”

At this, Eren fliches. Levi feels it like a strike to the spine.

“These are the sins you’re paying for.”

“Okay,” Eren says quietly. It’s the sound of grains of sand breathing against cloth, and Levi’s never heard him sound like that before.

Erwin’s face softens almost mechanically, a planned relaxation of the muscles to inspire tenderness, and he folds his hands in his lap.

(The rest of the Masters shift in their seats, barring Hanji, who lays with their legs hung over the armrest, lounging in the casual way that belies their attention to the matter at hand.)

“The sins you aren’t paying for are the people who fired at you on Omwat. You’re not paying for the sins of the Order as a whole. You’re not paying for the status of your birth, or the age at which you entered the Order. You made a mistake, Eren, but the entire galaxy’s failings aren’t yours.” Even as none of them do anything to make him believe the contrary. Even as Erwin loans him to the police.

Levi wonders if this is really the best avenue for them to take. Wonders further if this will just feel like another lie that Eren's been told.

“Yes sir,” Eren’s eyes have long since dropped away from Erwin’s face, finding the carpet beneath his feet. “May I be excused?”

(Sand over cloth. The sigh of fog over vegetation.

He sounds so small—a small voice around the nuclear reactor inside his chest.)

“You’re dismissed,” Erwin says—but Eren is already walking and the sound of his boots disappear down the hallway, though they don’t quite hit the staccato of a dead-sprint.

Levi waits two heartbeats—and then six more. “I’m going to return his lightsaber,” he says to the Council, but mostly to Erwin. And he doesn’t ask permission to do so.

“Sure,” Erwin says, standing himself, stretching his arms above his head. “I’m glad that’s settled. Time to go tell Nile what, exactly, I have him saddled with.” The smile that touches Erwin’s mouth is thin but genuine, and Levi rolls his eyes to acknowledge the joke that will certainly be in the morning.

And he follows the smell of a waiting storm, finding Eren just outside the sliding door to the main atrium of the Temple, toeing at the marble floor beneath his boots. If he feels Levi coming—which he has to, because even though his control is not the best, his senses are incredibly tuned—he doesn’t look up.

“I have something of yours,” Levi tells him—and at that, Eren looks up.

His eyes find the lightsaber before they lock on Levi’s face, and they flick over the pommel—and he notices that it’s clean in a way it wasn’t the last time he saw it. His fingers curl over the handle, his thumb tracing over the emitter end, and he clips it to his belt.

There is a pause and their eyes meet. And Eren clears his throat. “I don’t want it,” he says.

“Tough shit,” Levi replies.

They stand in an awkward sort of silence until Levi moves forward, making the first sort of move in a way he hasn’t ever, in this little corner of the galaxy that seems to matter more than any other part he can think of offhand. His hand comes up to the back of Eren’s head and he taps their foreheads together—and he can feel Eren’s sigh against his mouth.

( _“A warrior’s kiss,”_ an Eren from months ago says, like it’s a secret, because it _is_.)

“Welcome home,” Levi says quietly.

“I’m home,” Eren replies, just as quietly, and something ugly and angry and monstrous squirms between them for a half-a-breath.

(Everyone knows there are black holes at the center of the galaxy—balanced, perhaps, around one that’s big enough to swallow everything, eventually.

But there is a galaxy that lives as long as this moment does, with Levi’s forehead pressed against Eren’s, and they don’t talk about Jedi or the fight they had or the lightsaber that he’d taken because Eren wouldn’t.

They don’t talk at all.

Eren reaches into the Force—reaches out.

And Levi’s there to meet him.)


End file.
